Cool Pics

Botanical apartment therapy in Phuket, Thailand.

Stone VW in a field in Ithica, NY. Built in 1976 by a Cornell art class. 

Roof detail of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, in Barcelona.

Maple Syrup and Climate Change

Mother Jones reports on the unreported story of the warming effect of climate change on maple trees. This is the story of a "maple farmer, retired teacher, and citizen-scientist who is documenting and publicizing the declining state of maple trees in New Hampshire."

For many of us, climate change is an abstract topic, as tedious as a droning Al Gore lecture complete with wonky charts.

But not if you're a maple farmer in New England. The region has long provided a robust ecological niche for maple trees. But just a few decades of steadily warming weather has changed all that. Once-flourishing trees are shedding leaves too early in the season and producing sub-par sap.

Maple syrup—dark, minerally, its sweetness cut by a caramel edge—surely ranks among the great traditional foods on planet Earth. Climate change means we can no longer take it for granted. If current trends continue, maple syrup production could well be an historical memory by 2100.

In this video, Climate Desk's James West profiles Martha Carlson, a 65-five-year-old maple farmer, retired teacher, and citizen-scientist who is documenting and publicizing the declining state of maple trees in New Hampshire. "We need lots of citizens to observe nature," Carlson says at one point. I bet if we all opened our eyes like Carlson has, we'd find that climate change is affecting our own landscapes, too. And then maybe we'd be able to motivate our political class to actually do something about climate change.

GOP-Tea Party Attaches Strings to Hurricane Irene Assistance

The GOP-Tea Party Republicans have developed a new procedure, a new approach, a new policy for responding to disasters. When money is needed as a remedy for a potential disaster, the GOP-Tea Party Republicans will not lend support for the needed money or assistance unless the agenda that they want is also attached. This tactic was used during the debt-ceiling crisis. Eric Cantor has now says that "the GOP approach would break from how U.S. policymakers have operated." AlterNet has the story of GOP's Callous, Money-Oriented Response to Storm Damage: "It is Sinful"

Hurricane Irene made landfall this morning, hitting North Carolina with sustained winds of 90 miles per hour. Irene was downgraded overnight to a Category 1 hurricane, but it remains a powerful storm capable of doing serious harm.

Obviously, we can all hope the severity of the damage is limited. Regrettably, though, the line on federal disaster aid from congressional Republicans has not changed.

This week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the GOP approach would break from how U.S. policymakers have operated. Whereas Congress used to provide emergency funds after a disaster, without regard for budget caps or offsets, Republicans have said they will no longer accept such an approach -- if Democrats want emergency assistance in the wake of a natural disaster, Republicans will insist on attaching some strings to the relief funds.

In this case, the strings are cuts elsewhere in the budget. Or as Cantor's spokesperson put it, GOP leaders expect "additional funds for federal disaster relief" to be "offset with spending cuts."

The Republican position is already drawing fire.

"It is sinful to require us to cut somewhere ... in order to provide emergency disaster assistance for American citizens," Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) told The Huffington Post on Friday.

The Louisiana Democrat pointed out that this weekend is the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated his district and cost the federal government more than $100 billion. That recovery effort would have been delayed "by years" if Congress had required the same kind of spending cuts to offset aid, he said.

"I have been one who has been preparing for the hurricane, trying to give people some comfort. One thing they need to know is the federal government can come to their aid," Richmond said. "I don't think we're in a position, given the rules set up by the majority, that we're going to be able to come to their aid quickly."

Perhaps realizing the potential for a political nightmare -- Republicans are already unpopular; just wait until they hold hostage relief funds for communities hit by a hurricane -- GOP leaders weren't eager to talk about their position yesterday.

But they didn't disavow it, either. Cantor's office rejected questions about "hypothetical federal aid caused by hypothetical damage," despite the fact that the Majority Leader and his spokesperson were more than willing to discuss the position 24 hours earlier.

House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) office was also cagey, saying policymakers will "discuss costs when and if they occur."

Neither Republican leader offered the correct response, which is, "Of course we'll do whatever it takes to help the affected communities."

With any luck, this will be a moot point. If the damage isn't severe, Congress won't have to approve emergency relief. At this point, we just don't know.

But in the event of extensive damage, there's a real possibility that the first question from congressional Republicans won't be, "How can we help?" but rather, "What will Democrats give us in exchange for disaster aid?

Paul Krugman has astutely observed that this behavior is analogous to a hostage situation.

Six months ago President Obama faced a hostage situation. Republicans threatened to block an extension of middle-class tax cuts unless Mr. Obama gave in and extended tax cuts for the rich too. And the president essentially folded, giving the G.O.P. everything it wanted.

Now, predictably, the hostage-takers are back: blackmail worked well last December, so why not try it again? This time House Republicans say they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling — a step that could inflict major economic damage — unless Mr. Obama agrees to large spending cuts, even as they rule out any tax increase whatsoever.

Legislators have historically been willing to compromise. Krugman notes what has changed?

The answer is the radicalization of the Republican Party. Normally, a party controlling neither the White House nor the Senate would acknowledge that it isn’t in a position to impose its agenda on the nation. But the modern G.O.P. doesn’t believe in following normal rules. [...] At some point — and sooner rather than later — the president has to draw a line. Otherwise, he might as well move out of the White House, and hand the keys over to the Tea Party.

The President did give in to the GOP-Tea Party agenda with tax cuts and the debt-ceiling. Now, there are catastrophic costs for disaster relief. The response of the GOP-Tea Party is to have another hissy fit, hold their breath till they turn blue and claim there will be no money unless their strings are attached.

I hear conservatives continually criticism liberals for a negative attitude toward them. But sometimes, truth is merely truth. And if negativity stems from the truth, then one should look at the behavior emanating from the actor or participant of the action rather than the observer of the facts. It is time to put the children to bed without their supper and just say NO to being held hostage. Yell as loud as you can, "Right back at you Cantor!!!!"

The Phenomenon of Carrottmob

Brent Schulkin had a novel idea. If you want change. If you want a person, business or corporation to do something positive to help clean the environment. If you want to change a negative to a positive then use incentives instead of punishment. PBS has the story:

If you want to get an uncooperative donkey to move, the old adage says that you can coax it with a carrot. This philosophy is at the heart of Carrotmob, a San Francisco-based movement that’s reinventing the time-honored protest technique of the boycott. Carrotmob works like a boycott in reverse, providing incentive — the “carrots” — to businesses in exchange for reform.

As part of our Agents of Change series, Need to Know talks to Brent Schulkin, the brainchild behind Carrotmob, about how he’s growing this new model of protest into a global movement.

Watch a cartoon explanation. Check out the website.

How Organized Consumer Purchasing Can Change Business from carrotmob on Vimeo.

This is change that works.

Future Farming

Vertical farming is a revolutionary idea that would enable cities to feed themselves.

GOP Science Deniers - Déjà vu

An anti-science mania has taken over the GOP! Law Professor Robert Benson argues that "being vocally anti-science has become the defining mark of a current style of politics, an intentional ignorance that recalls the Scopes Monkey Trial."

The Second Coming of Science

You’ve got to go back to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 for a precedent to the anti-science mania that is currently sweeping the GOP. Then, the issue was teaching Darwin’s work on evolution in the schools. Today, the issue is global warming. Then, as now, large numbers of politicians tapped into the stratum of popular culture that simply rejects science as the basis for public or personal decisions. The chief prosecutor of high school teacher John Scopes, William Jennings Bryan, gloated that literal interpretation of the Bible trumped scientific knowledge. This resonated with large masses of ordinary folks, the ones H. L. Mencken and the liberal press were calling “yokels” and “morons.”

Turns out the yokels and morons won, at least for a generation. Scopes was found guilty of violating the Tennessee law that prohibited teaching evolution, and his conviction (though later overturned on a technicality) galvanized the anti-evolution movement for years. Politicians came pouring in. Scores of resolutions were introduced in state legislatures and school boards all over the country, setting back the teaching of evolution for decades until logic and reason and the scientific method gradually reasserted themselves in the culture.

The 1925 Anti-Science Climate of Today

Today, Republicans are falling over themselves in a rush to ridicule the science that shows our use of fossil fuels is producing greenhouse gases that are warming the planet to disastrous levels. These findings were confirmed even by the Bush administration before it left office, as well as by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and every other significant scientific academy around the world, not to mention the unpaid global work of hundreds of volunteer scientists for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Republicans Ceny Climate Change

But anti-scientists are undaunted by facts. More than half of the incoming Republican caucus denies the validity of climate change science. Some 74 percent of Republicans in the U.S. Senate now take that stance, as do 53 percent of GOP in the House. Here’s a sampler of what some of their leading illuminati have to say about it:

“I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do. …” — Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin

“Nobody really knows the cause. The earth cools, the earth warms … It could be caused by carbon dioxide or methane. Maybe we should kill the cows to stop the methane, or stop breathing to stop the CO2 … Thousands of people die every year of cold, so if we had global warming it would save lives … We ought to look out for people. The earth can take care of itself.” — Rep. Duncan Hunter, California

“There was a report a couple of weeks ago that in fact you look at this last year, it was the warmest year in the last decade, I think was the numbers that came out. I don’t — I accept that. I do not say that it is man-made.”Rep. Fred Upton, Michigan —

“The greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people.” — Sen. James Inhofe, Oklahoma

Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois says we need not worry about the planet being destroyed because, citing chapter 8, verse 22 of the Book of Genesis, God promised Noah it wouldn’t happen again after the great flood.

Sen. John McCain co-authored a good global warming bill when running for president in 2008. But he did a 180-degree turnabout when running for re-election to Arizona’s Senate seat two years later, suddenly saying, “There’s great questions about it that need to be resolved.”

What Happened?

The Tea Party and its allies had made it unacceptable to the GOP base to be anywhere except pandering to the anti-science crowd.

None of this would have surprised historian Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer in 1964 for his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Starting with the colonies, Hofstadter shows how the vast underlying stratum of anti-elite, anti-reason, anti-science Americans has frequently erupted into political and cultural action. These are folks who never heard of the Enlightenment of the 18th century, and do not experience a lot of reason, logic or the empirical method in their daily lives. They live by “common sense,” personal relationships and superstition. They have always been with us, and there are a lot of them.

Their outburst into today’s anti-science global warming mania would just be the latest chapter in Hofstadter’s book.

The Rise of Idiot America Today

You might think that the revolution of Internet-blogging-networking technology would work to spread sound scientific knowledge more broadly, but you would be wrong. The new technology spreads a cacophony of voices in which the pre-Enlightenment folks are not only equal but more numerous and dominant than the voices of reason.

Journalist Charles Pierce not long ago wrote an essay on “Idiot America,” followed by a book of that name, in which he argued that “the rise of Idiot America today represents — for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power — the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they’re talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.”

Think Tanks and Lobbyists

Moreover, the new technology is not working alone. You have the likes of oil interests such as Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil funding a phalanx of anti-science spokesmen, think tanks and lobbyists. They put their money into sowing doubt about the scientific consensus, as many of these same people did on tobacco, ozone and acid rain, playing on the fact that the way science works is to set up repeated challenges of the evidence by peers but ignoring that scientific consensuses do indeed exist — otherwise, we would not have made the progress we did on tobacco, ozone and acid rain.

Sheltered by the technological cacophony and the big money available, politicians feel unashamed to stand in front of the National Academy of Sciences and virtually every climate scientist in the world and utter irrational things like “God promised Noah …,” or “solar flares,” or “nobody really knows,” “not man-made” or “hoax.”

Creating Controversy

“[The deniers’] goal is to create the perception that fundamental aspects of climate science are controversial,” write several scientists connected to the National Academy. “They are not.”

“All their claims, all the studies cited and all the evidence they have presented has been thoroughly reviewed by climate scientists. There is no scientific basis for contesting the academy’s finding.”

We are in Tennessee again, 1925, in the grip of the anti-scientists and their politicians. We will lose a generation in dealing with greenhouse gases. Yet the science says we have only a few years.

Clarence Darrow, defense lawyer and William Bryan, prosecutor, during the Scopes Monkey Trial, circa 1925.

Choosing to Disbelieve Climate Change, at Our Peril!!

Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! interviewed Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster, about her new book on climate change and the climate change deniers. In the interview, Naomi Klein answers the question, "Why Climate Change is so Threatening to Right-Wing Ideologues."

Climate change is seen as an Identity Issue on the Right.

Well, some people believe in climate change, but the main thing is they don’t believe that humans have anything to do with climate change. And it isn’t about the science, because when you delve deeper into it and ask why people don’t believe in it, they say that it’s because they think it’s a socialist plot to redistribute wealth. It’s easy to make fun of, you know, and there’s all this language, like "watermelons," that they say the green groups are watermelons: they’re green on the outside, but they’re red on the inside. Or George Will once said it’s a green tree with red roots. And the idea is that it’s some sort of a communist plot. And this is actually not at all true. And in fact, most of the big green groups are loath to talk about economics and often don’t want to see themselves as being part of a left at all, see climate change as an issue that transcends politics entirely.

Climate Change seen as a Threat

But something very different is going on on the right, and I think we need to understand what that is. Why is climate change seen as such a threat? I don’t believe it’s an unreasonable fear. I think it’s unreasonable to believe that scientists are making up the science. They’re not. It’s not a hoax. But actually, climate change really is a profound threat to a great many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. So, in fact, if you really wrestle with the implications of the science and what real climate action would mean, here’s just a few examples what it would mean.

Reverse Globalization and Free Trade Agenda

It would mean upending the whole free trade agenda, because it would mean that we would have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. And this is the legacy of the free trade era. So, this has been a signature policy of the right, pushing globalization and free trade. That would have to be reversed.

Redistribute Wealth

You would have to deal with inequality. You would have to redistribute wealth, because this is a crisis that was created in the North, and the effects are being felt in the South. So, on the most basic, basic, "you broke it, you bought it," polluter pays, you would have to redistribute wealth, which is also against their ideology.

Regulate Corporations

You would have to regulate corporations. You simply would have to. I mean, any serious climate action has to intervene in the economy. You would have to subsidize renewable energy, which also breaks their worldview.

Requires Strong United Nations

You would have to have a really strong United Nations, because individual countries can’t do this alone. You absolutely have to have a strong international architecture.

Deny the Science

So when you go through this, you see, it challenges everything that they believe in. So they’re choosing to disbelieve it, because it’s easier to deny the science than to say, "OK, I accept that my whole worldview is going to fall apart," that we have to have massive investments in public infrastructure, that we have to reverse free trade deals, that we have to have huge transfers of wealth from the North to the South. Imagine actually contending with that. It’s a lot easier to deny it.

But what I see is that the green groups, a lot of the big green groups, are also in a kind of denial, because they want to pretend that this isn’t about politics and economics, and say, "Well, you can just change your light bulb. And no, it won’t really disrupt. You can have green capitalism." And they’re not really wrestling with the fact that this is about economic growth. This is about an economic model that needs constant and infinite growth on a finite planet. So we really are talking about some deep transformations of our economy if we’re going to deal with climate change. And we need to talk about it.

Final Word

Look, my fear is that climate change is the crisis, the biggest crisis of all, and that if we aren’t careful, if we don’t come up with a positive vision of how climate change can make our economies and our world more just, more livable, cleaner, fairer, then this crisis will be exploited to militarize our societies, to create fortress continents. And we’re really facing a choice. And, you know, I think what we really need now is for the people fighting for economic justice and environmental justice to come together.

"Climate change challenges everything conservatives believe in. So they're choosing to disbelieve it, at our peril."

Read the full interview here.

The Pesticides in Our Food

rick/flickr

The Environmental Working Group's 2010 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides is a great resource to consumers.

EWG puts out this information along with some level headed advice from their president, Ken Cook.

We recommend that people eat healthy by eating more fruits and vegtables, whether conventional or organic. But people don't want to eat pestisides with their produce if they don't have to. And with EWG's guide, they don't have to.

However, a big agriculture lobbying group is trying to debunk it. The Alliance for Food and Farming's main argument: is that the "Promotion of the 'Dirty Dozen' list actually makes the work of improving the diets of Americans more difficult because it scares consumers away from the affordable fruits and vegetables that they enjoy."

To understand why the AFF is against information from EWG, it is necessary to understand who's behind the AFF.

According to SourceWatch, its board of directors includes honchos from the California Strawberry Commission, the California Tomato Farmers, the Produce Marketing Association, and the California Association of Pest Control Advisors, among other industry groups.

According to The Atlantic, the alliance is little more than a PR front.

[It's] directors include executives from corporate agricultural interests such as Sunkist, Western Growers, California Strawberry Commission, California Tomato Farmers, and the California Association of Pest Control Advisors. The alliance requested the federal dollars through the California Department of Food and Agriculture to "correct the misconception that some fresh produce items contain excessive amounts of pesticide residues," according to the alliance's grant application (PDF).

What is the nature of the EWG's "misconceptions"? Here's how the EWG introduces its guide:

Eat your fruits and vegetables! The health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables outweigh the risks of pesticide exposure. Use EWG's "Shopper's Guide to Pesticides" to reduce your exposures as much as possible, but eating conventionally-grown produce is far better than not eating fruits and vegetables at all.

This is another example of when Big Ag attacks, the government folds. USDA just gave the lobbyists $180,000 to aid their smear campaign.

The White House garden may be green and unsullied by agricultural chemicals, but Obama's United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) isn't.

Too Much, Too Little, Too Late

Mother Jones has an article by Kiera Butler on the "12 Most Toxic Fish (For Humans and the Planet.)"

Food & Water Watch just released its 2010 Smart Seafood Guide to the safety and sustainability of more than 100 kinds of fish and shellfish. Now I still love the Monterey Bay Aquarium's pocket guides and searchable Seafood Watch site (the only place where you can geek out with a trawling fact card, as far as I know), but the Smart Seafood Guide has a few unique features worth pointing out.

For starters, while some guides only address human health issues (like mercury) and environmental problems (like overfishing), Food & Water Watch also considers seafood's socioeconomic impact. "For example, lobster is a a key part of the economy up in Maine," says Marianne Cufone, director of Food & Water Watch's fish program. "Knowing that fact is really important to some consumers."

Another handy thing: It's organized by texture and taste, so you can figure out the safest and most sustainable options in categories such as "mild" and "steak-like." This makes it easy to figure out substitutes for recipes.

Here's Food & Water Watch's "dirty dozen" list of seafood that failed to meet at least two of the group's criteria. For more details, plus a list of alternatives for each verboten species, check out the guide. In no particular order:

1. King crab

• Even though crab is abundant in some parts of the US, imports from Russia—which aren't well regulated—are much cheaper and more common.

2. Caviar, especially from beluga and other wild-caught sturgeon

• Overfishing and poaching of this coveted species is very common.

3. Atlantic bluefin tuna

• Extreme overfishing, plus concerns about mercury and PCB contamination.

4. Orange roughy

• May contain mercury and "is particularly vulnerable to overfishing due to its long lifespan and slow maturation."

5. Atlantic flatfish (e.g. flounder, sole and halibut)

• Seriously overfished.

6. American eel

• Concerns about mercury and PCBs.

7. Atlantic Cod

• Overfished, and also has major bycatch problems.

8. Imported catfish

• Much of it comes from Southeast Asia, "where use of chemicals and antibiotics is barely regulated."

9. Chilean seabass

• Concerns about mercury, plus illegal fishing in Chile damages marine life and seabirds.

10. Shark

• May contain mercury, also overfished.

11. Atlantic and farmed salmon

• Concerns about contamination with PCB, pesticides, and antibiotics. Also, waste and germs from salmon farms often leaches out of the cages and can harm the surrounding marine life.
  

12. Imported shrimp

• About 90 percent of it comes from countries where the seafood industry (waste control, chemical use, and labor) isn't well regulated.

Over fishing, pollution and environmental considerations are all aspects of this issue which need to be considered in making decision about what to eat.

Visualizing the BP Oil Spill

Check this out!!!!

If It Was My Home - Visualizing the BP Oil Spill

About The Spill

An explosion on the BP operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed eleven crew members on April 20, 2010, sparking the greatest environmental disaster in United States history. In combination with the Texas City Refinery Explosion and the Prudohoe Bay Oil Spill, this marks the third serious incident involving BP in the United States in the last five years. Current estimates put the amount of oil being discharged from the broken well at above 1,470,000 US gallons per day! There are over 400 different species of animals living in the area affected by the spill. 403 sea turtles and 46 dolphins have been found dead within the spill area (NOAA). BP is operating oil skimmers and other cleanup tools to try to remove oil from the water and Louisiana is building oil containment berms to halt the spread of oil. Experts are uncertain what effect, if any, these efforts will have.

What Can You Do?

• Talk. First, share this map with your friends so they can understand the impact as well. Next, write to your Representatives and Senators and share your feelings about this disaster.
• Think. The EPA is soliciting ideas for possible technology solutions to aid in the oil spill response efforts. Submit your idea. You can also visit the clever inventors over at GulfClean.org and help them build their crowdsourced technology for oil cleanup.
• Volunteer. Lousiana and Florida are both looking for volunteers to help in cleanup and prevention. If you have a boat and live or work on the gulf coast, you can participate in the Vessels of Opportunity program where BP will pay you to take part in oil skimming operations.
• Donate The National Wildlife Foundation and International Bird Rescue are accepting donations for coastal relief. Matter of Trust is also collecting hair to be bundled into booms. Hair absorbs oil even better than the synthetic materials being used. You can find a participating hair salon or barbershop at their site.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How do you know how big the spill is?

   The data used to create the spill image comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA releases a daily report detailing where the spill is going to be within the next 24 hours. They do this by collecting data from a number of sources, including satellite imagery and reports by trained observers who have made helicopter flights back and forth across the potentially affected areas. This data is entered into several leading computer models by NOAA oceanographers along with information about currents and winds in the gulf.

2. Why does the spill seem to change size as I move it?

   If you move the spill south of the gulf, without crossing the equator, you'll see it appear to shrink in size. If you move it North, it will appear to increase in size. The spill actually covers the same area on the map no matter where you place it, what changes is the map itself! Google Maps, and many maps we're used to looking at, use something called "Mercator Projection" in order to draw the spherical surface of the earth onto a flat plane. This projection distorts space as you move away from the equator in order to make the nice flat map you see. This means that a 100 square mile object placed at the equator will appear much smaller on the map than the same object placed closer to the poles. If you think about it, this makes sense -- if you were to wrap a string around the globe, you would need much more string to do so at the equator than you would further North, yet Google Maps portrays the Earth as a rectangle. You can read more about Mercator Projection on Wikipedia.

3. Shouldn't the name of your site be ifitWEREmyhome.com?

   Probably.

4. How often is this map updated?

   Usually at least once per day. You can find the date it was last updated at the bottom of the page.

5. Is the oil really hurting anything?

   See for yourself.

Oil Spill Map Data Courtesy Of The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Data Last Updated: 6/24/2010

Destroying Water Sources

WCS has big plans for its radioactive waste dump in Andrews County, Texas.

Mainstream media hasn't picked up on this story about the threat of radioactive waste from a nuclear power plant infiltrating our water supply at the 111 million-acre Ogallala Aquifer in Andrews County, Texas. "How Does Your Water Glow" asks what could go wrong when energy policy is viewed with an eye toward profit and regulation becomes politicized? One need look no further than West Texas—and the Gulf Coast.

In our nation’s quest to reshape its energy policy, nuclear power has re-emerged as an alternative to fossil fuels. In February, President Barack Obama announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees to jumpstart construction of new nuclear reactors. But where do we put the newly generated nuclear waste? Serious questions remain about the safe disposal of refuse from present and past nuclear operations.

And no place more so than in a remote area of West Texas, where a politically connected company, Waste Control Specialists (WCS), operates a 1,338-acre radioactive waste dump on top of one of the largest aquifers in North America, the Ogallala Aquifer. Also known as the High Plains Aquifer, this 174,000 square-mile water table—approximately the size of California—underlies parts of eight states (Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming). The aquifer supplies drinking water to 1.9 million people who live within its boundary and provides 30 percent of the country’s groundwater used for irrigation.

For a cautionary example of what could go wrong when energy policy is viewed with an eye toward profit and regulation becomes politicized, one need look no further than West Texas—and the Gulf Coast.

In 2008 and 2009, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) granted WCS licenses to dispose of radioactive waste at its dump in Andrews County, Texas.

Founded in 1994, the politically connected WCS’ parent company, the multinational conglomerate Valhi, Inc., is chaired by billionaire Harold Simmons, who is famous for giving $3 million to the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth and $2.9 million to the American Issues Project (AIP). During the 2008 election, AIP sponsored ads linking Obama to Chicago educator Bill Ayers (a former leader of the Weather Underground and a current member of the In These Times Board of Editors). Simmons also contributed $620,000 to Rick Perry, the Texas governor responsible for appointing the three TCEQ commissioners who approved WCS’ radioactive waste disposal licenses.

WCS’ most recent license allows the company to dispose of Class A, B and C low-level radioactive waste, which includes fission products from nuclear reactors and weapons production and waste from research, industrial and medical facilities. On its website, WCS boasts, “Our site’s unique geology, arid and isolated location, and strong support of the Permian Basin community, make our Andrews County facility one of a kind.” Indeed it is.

Older maps place the WCS site on top of the Ogallala Aquifer. Newer maps, however, depict the boundary of the aquifer further north and off-site. Because WCS now controls the hydrogeological monitoring of the area, it is impossible for scientists to reach consensus on the boundaries of the Ogallala Aquifer and other water tables close to the site, and the possible hydraulic continuity from one water table to another.

In order to prevent radioactive material from contaminating the water supply, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) forbids any nuclear waste disposal facility to overlie an area where groundwater could penetrate the waste material. NRC guidelines put it this way: “The disposal site must provide sufficient depth to the water table that ground water intrusion, perennial or otherwise, into the waste will not occur.”

The precise distance between the disposal site and the aquifer has been the subject of intense debate. Prior to the licensing, a volley of data, tests and revisions ricocheted between WCS, the press and environmental groups, each claiming various water table boundaries and degrees of consequent risk to the public.

But Glenn Lewis, a former technical writer for TCEQ, has no doubts. During the four years Lewis worked on WCS’ application to establish a radioactive waste dump, he and the seven other members of his team became concerned about the site’s proximity to the Ogallala Aquifer and other water tables, and characterized the location as a “wet” site.

“The only safe site for radioactive waste is a dry one,” Lewis says. “It was the unanimous decision of the team that the WCS site is irredeemably unsuitable for the disposal of radioactive waste, and we said this much.” TCEQ commissioners ignored this information, and Lewis and two other review team members, an engineer and a geologist, resigned from TCEQ. All three cite upper management’s indifference to their professional recommendations as the reason for their departure.

At least one previous pre-licensing evaluation at the same location echoed the conclusions of Lewis’ team. In 1992 and 1993, independent oil and gas consulting firm Terra Dynamics recorded samples from 58 boreholes at the site; 46 samples were described as “moist,” five as “wet,” and one as “making water.”

In a June 2009 story in the Texas Observer, Forrest Wilder described “nine areas inside and near” the disposal site where groundwater was present. When questioned about this, company spokesman Chuck McDonald (tacitly acknowledging a connection between the groundwater and the company’s radioactive waste dump) explained that WCS had developed a solution to the problem: “It is a moisture disposal system that pumps moisture out.”

When laws and land shift

In 1999, the Texas legislature abolished the state authority on radioactive waste disposal, transferring jurisdiction to a new commission, currently known as the TCEQ. In 2003, the legislature amended the state’s Health and Safety Code, authorizing the TCEQ to issue a single license for compact waste, and allowing the designated license holder to also dispose of federal waste. And in 2007, the legislature amended the Health and Safety Code, transferring the licensing and regulation of radioactive material from the Department of State Health Services to the TCEQ.

The combination of these three legislative acts ensured that radioactive waste disposal would be the purview of the TCEQ. The TCEQ is structured so that three commissioners, appointed by the governor, make final determinations on contested permitting. In 2008, the commissioners approved WCS’ by-product materials disposal license and, in 2009, a low-level radioactive waste disposal license. Thus, WCS became licensed by the state of Texas to dispose of almost the full gamut of radioactive waste (barring the hottest, such as spent reactor fuel) from both state and federal sources.

According to WCS, the 2009 license was a landmark event: “WCS is now the only facility in the United States licensed in the last 30 years to dispose of Class A, B and C low-level radioactive waste.” There are two other facilities that are licensed to handle the same three classes, US Ecology in Washington and EnergySolutions in South Carolina. But unlike WCS, they are not licensed for uranium by-product materials.

In addition, the dumps in Washington and South Carolina only accept in-compact waste. Texas is currently on a precipice concerning compact waste. Decisions made in June by eight commissioners of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission (six of whom are Gov. Perry appointees) may allow for the disposal of radioactive waste from 36 states at the WCS site. “This could open [Texas] up to not only become the nation’s but potentially the world’s dump site,” says Cyrus Reed, the conservation director of Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter.

WCS’ success can be traced to the flexibility of the TCEQ. As the lead environmental agency for the state, it is not only responsible for granting licenses for nuclear waste disposal, but it is also charged with monitoring the state’s water quality. Yet in the case of WCS, TCEQ spokesperson Terry Clawson says it is the licensee’s responsibility to implement ongoing water monitoring. In other words, the TCEQ gave WCS, the operator of the nuclear waste site, the responsibility to monitor itself. In other words, safety of the water in the Ogallala Aquifer—the same aquifer that 1.9 million people get their drinking water from — is in the hands of a company that operates a radioactive waste site.

Groundwater at the WCS site is only one concern. Earthquakes are another. The WCS dump is located in the Central Basin Platform, a geologic region prone to earthquakes. And according to the NRC, “Areas must be avoided where tectonic processes such as faulting, folding, seismic activity, or vulcanism may occur with such frequency and extent to significantly affect the ability of the disposal site to meet the performance objectives.”

In the past century, West Texas has had two near-magnitude 6 earthquakes, increasing the likelihood that a magnitude 7 will occur in the next few hundred years. The epicenter of a magnitude 4.6 earthquake that occurred on Jan. 2, 1994, was four miles southeast of the WCS site.

“Predicting earthquakes is not physics. The best evidence we have is based on history,” says Cliff Frohlich, a seismologist and co-author of Texas Earthquakes. “And based on history, it would be remarkable if West Texas doesn’t have an earthquake in the next 200 years.”

Profit, people and emergency response

WCS immediately proved to be a profitable enterprise. In 2009 the company netted $8 million from a single Department of Energy (DOE) contract for uranium by-product waste from Ohio. The DOE has also slated WCS as both candidate and “preferred alternative” for an estimated 13-15,000 metric tons of elemental mercury for long-term storage.The final decision will be announced in the fall. In addition to the DOE, WCS’ extensive clientele includes BP, Brookhaven National Laboratory, DuPont, Exxon, Los Alamos National Laboratory, McAlester Army Ammunition, Nevada Test Site, Studsvik, Titanium Metals Corporation and Yankee Atomic Electric Power.

Texas authorities do not appear to take either the enormity or the probability of potential disasters at WCS seriously. The federal government, in turn, appears to trust Texas’ judgment.

With nuclear energy emerging on the national agenda as a means to combat climate change and meet rising demand, Americans need greater reassurance that environmental protection will remain a top priority. Currently, WCS is operating on one-tenth of their total acreage. If the TCEQ were to increase current disposal capacity, the WCS facility could potentially encompass more than 20 square miles.

As with the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, when the drive for corporate and industrial growth outpaces controls for safeguarding human health and natural resources, oversight and responsibility become too important a domain for any one entity to regulate. In the case of WCS and the Ogallala Aquifer, the public health of residents across eight states is being put at risk by decisions made by a few for the profit of one politically connected waste disposal company. 

The Ogallala under threat

The 111 million-acre Ogallala Aquifer is threatened by both contamination -- from fertilizer and pesticide run-off, animal waste and possibly enormous amounts of radioactive waste buried underground -- and overuse.

About 90 percent of the water drawn from the Ogallala is used to sustain agricultural production in the eight states it underlies. According to Scientific American, "This is the breadbasket of America -- the region that supplies at least one fifth of the total annual U.S. agricultural harvest." It is one of the most fecund farming areas in the world because of irrigation, yet rainfall and snowmelt aren't able to recharge an amount equal to yearly withdrawals.

In addition to agriculture, local industries place additional strain on the underground source. The economies of Lea County, N.M., and Andrews County, Texas, are largely driven by oil and gas. The quest for alternative energy sources has tossed a third thirsty player into the mix, whose survival will depend heavily on the Ogallala. A mile-and-a-half stretch of border straddled by Lea and Andrews counties has come to be known as "Nuclear Alley" for the burgeoning nuclear industry taking hold there.

Between agriculture, oil, gas and the planned nuclear facilities, the demands on the southern extent of the Ogallala Aquifer will only increase. Given the typically low rate of rainfall and this increased level of consumption in Nuclear Alley, the possibility of meaningful recharge of the aquifer is bleak.

According to Agricultural Policy Specialist Manjula V. Guru,"[Ogallala] water is being used faster than it is being replenished, and the result is predicted by many to be serious eco-centric pressure on the area in the not so distant future. ... Pumping the Ogallala is still a one-time experiment, unrepeatable and irreversible."

Left alone, natural processes would replenish this massive water table. Scientific American estimates it would take 6,000 years -- a hiccup in geological time, but mighty long in human terms.